Thursday 8 July 2010

four blows

A revolution in how we read and learn has taken place in the lifetime of today’s teenager.

Sixteen years ago, as Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa and O.J. Simpson fled very slowly from the police in a white Ford Bronco, Amazon.com was born. It was the first of four blows to public libraries: the others were Google (b. 1998), Wikipedia (b. 2001) and the Kindle (b. 2007). With these shiny new tools to hand, why would anyone step inside a library? Except to escape the rain.

My piece on reinventing the library.

pic: the new Library of Birmingham

1 comment:

  1. I would go in a library if it's closer than a bookstore. I like the tactile nature of the book, the ability to flip back-and-forth easily to check something I read earlier, to have a physical pile of books I am researching in readily at hand for cross-reference...you get the point.

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